Dot Music- Welcome to the hottest, coolest, best-dressed pop album of the year
Gwen Stefani - 'Love, Angel, Music, Baby'
(Thursday November 25, 2004 3:28 PM )
Released on 22/10/04
Label: Interscope
No contest, no doubt, and not a feeble move in sight: welcome to the hottest, coolest, best-dressed pop album of the year. It’s not entirely unexpected, but “Love, Angel, Music, Baby” – sleek, shimmery, and dripping with all-killer-no-filler musical bling – will outperform even your best guess about the glittery, giddy, smarty-pants talents of young Mrs Rossdale.
Frankly, it’s now clear that Gwen Stefani is, to quote Courtney Love, cruelly out of context, the girl with the most cake. And she’s making a greedy meal of it, too, with a high-style solo debut that’s a breathless trolley-dash through bleeping Eighties fizz, retro-referential old-skool hip-hop, TLC-esque post-Motown, breathily Madonna-besting ballads and gum-snapping, eye-rolling, deliciously wonky comic set pieces, all served up on a sugar-iced plate by a dream-team of A-list collaborators.
This isn’t the first time someone’s assembled supporting talent this heavyweight – OutKast’s Andre 3000, The Neptunes, Nellee Hooper, Dr Dre, Eve, Jam’n’Lewis, Dallas Austin, chart-doctor for hire Linda Perry, Prince sidekicks Wendy & Lisa, New Order – but it’s one of the few occasions that everyone involved sounds so delightedly on top of their game.
It’s probably because Stefani’s so clearly on top of hers. Echoing her growth as a suburban-raised style fanatic capable of teaching the Japanese girls and John Gallianos a thing or two via her own cannily-namechecked label L.A.M.B., musically speaking, she’s nobody’s Kylie-esque dress-up doll either. The up-to-the-minute hooks, tricks and sonic-wonderland aural décor may come courtesy of Pharrell and his ilk, but the real brilliance behind cooing, hiccupping, itchily irresistible single “What You Waiting For?”, the stomping, stripped-back “Hollaback Girl”, the icy-cool schoolyard sass of “Crash” and dizzy, fizzy, sexed-up drive of “Bubble Pop Electric” is all hers. Better and cheekier still, the hands-off-my-man “Danger Zone” sounds like the kind of peerless-pop killer Courtney thought she was cooking up on “Celebrity Skin”, and missed by a mile.
Best of all, those endearingly heartfelt diary-page reflections that made No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” a stone-cold classic are bigger and better than ever. “Cool” is a liltingly sweet paean to post-break-up friendships, and airy, girlishly fresh album stand-out “The Real Thing” soars lump-throatedly along on a peerlessly evocative Peter Hook bassline like some dreamy combination of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” and Ms Ciccone’s “True Blue”.
You’ll want to say “you go, girl”, but on the evidence of “Love, Angel, Music, Baby”, Gwen Stefani’s already gone…stratospheric. The competition – if there anyone else working the musical catwalk on this rarefied level – better hang up their Vivienne Westwood platforms and get the bus home.
by Jennifer Nine
(Thursday November 25, 2004 3:28 PM )
Released on 22/10/04
Label: Interscope
No contest, no doubt, and not a feeble move in sight: welcome to the hottest, coolest, best-dressed pop album of the year. It’s not entirely unexpected, but “Love, Angel, Music, Baby” – sleek, shimmery, and dripping with all-killer-no-filler musical bling – will outperform even your best guess about the glittery, giddy, smarty-pants talents of young Mrs Rossdale.
Frankly, it’s now clear that Gwen Stefani is, to quote Courtney Love, cruelly out of context, the girl with the most cake. And she’s making a greedy meal of it, too, with a high-style solo debut that’s a breathless trolley-dash through bleeping Eighties fizz, retro-referential old-skool hip-hop, TLC-esque post-Motown, breathily Madonna-besting ballads and gum-snapping, eye-rolling, deliciously wonky comic set pieces, all served up on a sugar-iced plate by a dream-team of A-list collaborators.
This isn’t the first time someone’s assembled supporting talent this heavyweight – OutKast’s Andre 3000, The Neptunes, Nellee Hooper, Dr Dre, Eve, Jam’n’Lewis, Dallas Austin, chart-doctor for hire Linda Perry, Prince sidekicks Wendy & Lisa, New Order – but it’s one of the few occasions that everyone involved sounds so delightedly on top of their game.
It’s probably because Stefani’s so clearly on top of hers. Echoing her growth as a suburban-raised style fanatic capable of teaching the Japanese girls and John Gallianos a thing or two via her own cannily-namechecked label L.A.M.B., musically speaking, she’s nobody’s Kylie-esque dress-up doll either. The up-to-the-minute hooks, tricks and sonic-wonderland aural décor may come courtesy of Pharrell and his ilk, but the real brilliance behind cooing, hiccupping, itchily irresistible single “What You Waiting For?”, the stomping, stripped-back “Hollaback Girl”, the icy-cool schoolyard sass of “Crash” and dizzy, fizzy, sexed-up drive of “Bubble Pop Electric” is all hers. Better and cheekier still, the hands-off-my-man “Danger Zone” sounds like the kind of peerless-pop killer Courtney thought she was cooking up on “Celebrity Skin”, and missed by a mile.
Best of all, those endearingly heartfelt diary-page reflections that made No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” a stone-cold classic are bigger and better than ever. “Cool” is a liltingly sweet paean to post-break-up friendships, and airy, girlishly fresh album stand-out “The Real Thing” soars lump-throatedly along on a peerlessly evocative Peter Hook bassline like some dreamy combination of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” and Ms Ciccone’s “True Blue”.
You’ll want to say “you go, girl”, but on the evidence of “Love, Angel, Music, Baby”, Gwen Stefani’s already gone…stratospheric. The competition – if there anyone else working the musical catwalk on this rarefied level – better hang up their Vivienne Westwood platforms and get the bus home.
by Jennifer Nine
posted by No Doubt at <$$>
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